


The Night Visit

by linman



Series: Tenebrae [4]
Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-02-02
Updated: 2010-02-02
Packaged: 2017-10-06 23:44:43
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,725
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/59024
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/linman/pseuds/linman
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which the end of Elisabeth's first term at Oxford turns out to be more stressful than she had expected. Spoilers through S5, "The Gift."</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Night Visit

**The Night Visit**

by L. Inman

 

“Dammit,” said Elisabeth.

            It was the time of the pendulum:  the crazy swing of life between the rhythm of inspired, prolific work and the hell of incompetence and despair:  the end of her first term in Oxford.  For the last ten days Elisabeth had been holed up in her new flat, pale as any vampire in the glow of her secondhand laptop, hammering out final papers and finishing exercises.  She was fairly sure that this term’s work would prove to her college that they weren’t crazy, taking a renegade American scholar on trust.  Fairly.  Rather.  Kindof.

            Of course then usually the pendulum swung back again and she was thinking—she had never _not_ been thinking, it seemed—that she was a total fraud, completely unfit for scholarship, that she wasn’t fooling anyone, even herself.

            The pendulum had swung back toward competent (albeit stressful) industry that evening; she had paused twice in the writing of her essay on Victorian fairytales, once to eat a hunk of cheese and the last of her French loaf, and the second time to make herself a cup of tea.

            Except that she had forgotten it while it was steeping, and when she went into the kitchen two hours later to rummage in the fridge for a snack, she saw the cup sitting there patiently on the counter, completely cold, with the string and tag hanging stained over the rim and a rainbowed oilslick film gathering like broken clouds over the dark liquid within.

            “Dammit,” she said again, and went to dump it out and throw away the tea bag.

            This led to a whirlwind bout of cleaning in the flat.  Elisabeth collected glasses and saucers from various rooms, washed them all in scalding water, and began to take a bottle of cleaner and a sponge to every flat surface she could think of; muttering to herself in two voices, one berating her for putting off sitting down at the computer and the other coining new sentences for the next paragraph of her essay.

            The new sentences were coming well.  Excited, Elisabeth abandoned her sponge mid-sweep and sat down hungrily to get them down.

 

In the economy of the fantastic, the accepted mores as well as the accepted empirical constructs of reality are distorted, so that sentient beings can behave with the unselfconsciousness of animals, and break rules the dreamer would never break—or allow others to break—in the real world.  Yet at the same time, this distortion allows for the awareness of a deeper morality: a commitment to a quest or a person that leads to an unlocking of a mystery that could never have been discovered without the

 

_Without the_—  _Without the_—  Elisabeth took off her glasses and scraped her hands down her face, straining her mind to produce the last phrase.  God, this was going to be such a crap paper.

            She was just reaching for the Backspace key when the phone rang.

            Elisabeth got up to answer it.  It was probably Brian, floundering among ungraded essays and pleading for a sanity break at the pub.  Appealing as that was, Elisabeth was going to say a firm No.  She would reward herself with drinks and books when this pendulum nightmare was over, not that it ever would be.  Besides, she was now guarding jealously the last of her savings, hoarded gifts and earnings from six months ago, and until she got her summer employment lined out she wasn’t about to go buck wild at the Drunken Mohel, even to listen to her friend’s latest compendium of student-essay bloopers.

            She picked up the cordless handset mid-chirp, pinned it to her face with her shoulder and went to sit back down at the keyboard, as a reinforcement of her resolve to keep working.  “Hello?”

            “Yes—is this Miss Elisabeth Bowen?”

            “…Yes,” Elisabeth said, suspiciously.

            “Yes, ma’am, this is Sims, the porter at Magdalen.”

            A puzzled dent appeared between Elisabeth’s brows.  She had paused in sitting down in her chair, and now stood up altogether.  “Yes?”

            “Yes, I—I have someone here who’s looking for you.  A Mr—”  there was a pause and a murmur— “a Mr Rupert Giles.  Do you know him?” he asked, his polite voice heavy with dubiety.

            It took Elisabeth a few seconds to process that she did indeed know a Mr Rupert Giles.

            “Ma’am?”

            “Oh—yes, yes I do know him.  But what—”  A few more seconds, and she was processing that the end of May meant more than the end of Trinity term.

            “…I can’t give out people’s addresses that have moved, you see,” the porter was saying, “and—besides—” he lowered his voice— “this guy doesn’t look all there.”

            “Let me talk to him,” Elisabeth said instantly.

            “Are you sure…?”

            “Yes, let me talk to him, please.”

            There was a confused shuffle on the line as Sims handed the phone over.

            “H-hallo? Elisabeth?”

            “Rupert—”

            “Elisabeth, is that you?  It’s me—Rupert Giles.”

            “Yes, Rupert,” she said, “I know you.”  Her voice came out drier than she’d meant, but it seemed to make no difference to him at all.  He went on as if she had not spoken.

            “I was in—in the neighborhood,” he was saying slowly, earnestly, “and I wanted to stop by your rooms and have a cup of tea.  But the porter here—”

            “No, that’s no good,” Elisabeth said, “I’ve moved.  I don’t live in College anymore.  I have a flat in --- Street.”

            “He says you don’t live in College anymore,” Rupert said.

            Elisabeth’s hand was beginning to shake, holding the phone.  She brought up her other hand to steady the receiver against her face.  “No,” she said patiently, “I don’t live in College anymore.  I have a flat in --- Street.  Here, let me give you the address—”

            Rupert was talking doggedly on, his voice like a threadbare carpet clinging for dear life to its tacks.  “The porter wouldn’t give me your forwarding address.  Security measure of some sort.  Reasonable, really, but I don’t think he likes me.”

            “I’m coming to get you,” Elisabeth said urgently.  She’d call Brian—borrow his car—

            “No—no—don’t do that, I have a car and it’s double-parked.”

            “Then let me give you the address.”

            “I drove here, and stopped at Magdalen to see you, and sit down for a moment.  Just to have a cup of tea, I know you’re busy.”

            “Rupert—”

            “Oh, God, that’s right, it’s the end of term isn’t it?”

            “Rupert,” Elisabeth said in a smaller voice, “have you been drinking?”

            “Drinking what?” he said, confused, and with a complete lack of defensiveness that told Elisabeth all she needed to know.

            “Nevermind, just let me give you my address.”

            “I think I could find my way to your new flat,” he said, “if I could get your street address.  Just—just for a moment.  You’re very busy, I know.  I just need—”

            “Rupert—have you got a pen and paper?”

            “I’m not drunk, just rather tired.  I think a cup of tea would—”

            “_Rupert_.”

            “Yes?”

            “I’m about to give you my address.  Have you got pen and paper?”

            “Oh—yes—right—hang on.”  His voice grew distant, talking to the porter.  “Do you have...?”  There was the sound of rustling and clinking.  “Right, go ahead,” Rupert said finally, sounding almost clear-headed.

            Elisabeth spelled the address out carefully to him; made him repeat it back to her; gave him driving directions, and made him repeat those back too.  “You can park on the street,” she told him finally.

            “Yes—”

            “Have you got it?”

            “Yes.”

            “Good, right, then I’ll see you in ten minutes or so.  I live on the ground floor; I’ll put all the lights on, so you’ll know where to park.”

            “Okay.  I’m going now.”

            “All right.  Wait—Rupert—”

            “Yes?”

            “Do you have the piece of paper?”

            “What piece of paper?”

            “The one with the directions on it.”

            “Oh, yes, of course.  No…wait…ah, here it is, on the counter.  I’ve got it now.”

            “Okay,” Elisabeth said, digging her nails into her other palm.  “Give the phone back to the porter now.  I’ll see you in ten minutes.”

            “Right.  Here he is.”

            “Ma’am?”  Sims’s voice was back, polite but still dubious.  “Are you sure you know what you’re getting into?  The man’s drunk—”

            “He’s not drunk, he’s in the last stages of exhaustion,” she said.  “Listen:  if he doesn’t get here within half an hour, I’m going to ring you back, okay?  He may need medical assistance, but if he can get to my flat I can take it from there.”

            “All right,” Sims said, mollified.

            Elisabeth got off the phone and paced wildly around her livingroom.  She decided finally to make the cup of tea for him first.  She put the kettle on and turned the flame up full blast.  _I only need a cup of tea_, he had said.  “Like hell,” Elisabeth said aloud, savagely.  Then remembered sharply that she’d promised to turn on all the lights for him.  She hurried out of the kitchen and went to all the light switches she could find, hitting them on even if they gave no light onto the street.  She wished, cursing, that she’d bought an extra floor lamp for the livingroom. 

            She went back into the kitchen and watched the kettle not boil.  She looked at her watch.  Only five minutes gone.  Rupert might need more help than she could give him.  Maybe she should call Brian.  Debating that decision—no, she would not call Brian for now—took only another minute off the clock.

            Five excruciating minutes later the kettle was slowly heating, and still he had not arrived.  Elisabeth went to the door and peered out into the night for the umpteenth time.  It was raining, a fact Elisabeth had failed to discover in the six previous hours she’d been holed up in her flat working.  As the minutes passed, the rain came down harder, blowing in cold gusts along the street and dripping erratically from the porch eaves.

            Ten minutes later the kettle was still not hot enough, and Rupert was nowhere to be seen.  Elisabeth was going to call Sims, she was going to call him back—but first she would have one more look out the door.

            She popped her head out into the cold night and stared up and down the street, willing Rupert’s car (God only knew what car it was) to pull past and stop, seeing her.  It didn’t happen.  Then just as she was about to withdraw inside, a pair of headlights trundled slowly into view, coming in from the opposite direction she had given Rupert: but she knew it was him.  The car slowed and finally began to nose into a parking place next to the pavement, just as from behind her the kettle gave a sharp whistling blast.

            Elisabeth hurried inside, leaving the door open, to pour the steaming water over a fresh tea bag.  She returned in time to hear the footsteps scraping slowly up the steps, and waited on the threshold till he appeared, hatless and dripping, his glasses spattered and his burberry misbuttoned.  He offered her a little smile.  “I only made one wrong turn,” he said.  “You see, I know Oxford.”

            “I expect you do,” she said, stepping back to let him in.

            He wandered over the threshold, attempting to unbutton his coat.  “I just came to stop a minute.  I was in the neighborhood.  And I’ve—I’ve been traveling and I’m a bit tired—and I thought perhaps you could give me a cup of tea,” he said.

            “It’s steeping as we speak,” she assured him.  She shut the door.

            “Just—” he said breathlessly— “just a cup—would be—”  He was still struggling with the top button of his coat.  She took his hands away and worked the button free for him.  He raised distracted eyes to the ceiling as she straightened his coat and undid the rest of the buttons.  “Did you say there was tea?” he said finally, as she began to work the coat off his shoulders.

            “Yes, there’s tea.”

            “Good.  I’ll only stay a few minutes.”

            “Like hell, Rupert.  You’re in a bad way.”

            “I’m just a bit tired.”

            “Bullshit,” she said, with as much cheer as she could muster.  “You’re literally dead on your feet.”

            “Not literally,” he corrected her.

            “Whatever,” she said.  “I’m just a lit major, I don’t know from literally.  But I do know from shellshock and exhaustion—You’re starting a bruise on your face.  What happened?”  She got the coat off him, finally, and hung it up next to hers.

            “I was in a fight,” he said dreamily, pulling off his rain-speckled glasses.  “Buggers.  I threatened to kill Robson and they finally backed off and stopped following me.”

            Elisabeth paused in her unsuccessful efforts to herd him toward the couch in the livingroom.  “The Council is following you?”

            “They _were_ following me.  Until I let them catch me up on the road and fought them.”

            “Were you leaving them, or on your way to make a report?”

            “Hm?...oh—I was leaving them.  Buggers,” he mumbled.  “Dinged up my good pair of glasses.  D’you have a handkerchief?”

            “First things first.  Let’s get you sitting down.”  She took his arm and began to guide him further into the house.  His body was intractable to the touch, like dead weight.  After a few moments of gentle tugging and prodding, she got him moving.  “So you reported to the Council, then you left, they sent some men to follow you, you drove them off, and then what?”

            “Then I just kept driving for a while.  Is there tea?”

            “Yes, there’s tea.  I want you to sit.”  She pushed firmly on his chest, and he sat down abruptly on the couch as if she’d broken his knees.  She took his glasses from his hand and set them, still specked with rain, on the ratty coffee table.  His tie was awry, and beginning to loosen; she tugged at it, and he helped her take it off altogether.  She laid it aside, and reached for his collar, but he grasped her wrist and held the back of her hand to his chest, unfocused and not quite gentle.  “Please,” he said.

            “Yes?”  Elisabeth’s stomach fluttered uncomfortably.

            “Please,” he said again.  “I know I said—I’m sorry, but—you smell so good....”

            She raised a skeptical eyebrow.  “I do?”

            “Could you—” he uttered, “can we—”

            She extricated herself gently from his grip.  “I’m going to get your tea now.”

            But he reached for her again.  “Please,” he said.

            She looked down into his face.  His eyes were awful—focusless and shattered, and though there was no smell of alcohol about him, he was giving off waves of dissolution so strong it may as well have been a scent.  “That’s not in the plan tonight,” she told him, her voice more gentle than she had thought it capable.

            “Not—?”

            “The plan is this:  you drink tea, and then you drink something stronger, and then you sleep.”

            He shook his head.  “No,” he said.  “No, I can’t sleep.”

            She did not challenge him, and he let her out of his grasp.  “Your tea’s getting cold,” she told him.  “Hang on.”

            She went her shaky way into the kitchen and doctored his tea with lots of sugar and a little milk, swallowing her rising gorge.  Before carrying the cup out to him, she pressed her fingertips to her eyelids and drew a long calming breath.

            He seemed not even to have moved when she returned to him: he was still staring, unfocused, at the space of air she had been in.  It took him a moment to realize what she was trying to hand him.  “It’s hot,” she warned him.  “No, both hands.  Like this.  That’s right.  Drink up, now.”

            She watched, her throat aching badly, as he brought the cup to his lips and sipped thirstily.

            He let out a small moan after the first sip, and again after the second.  “It’s very good,” he said huskily, and buried his face in the cup again.

            “Good,” she said.  “Drink that and you’ll get something stronger.”

            He had drunk half of it already.  “Can I—can I have a second cup?”

            She smiled, for the first time.  “Yes, of course.”

            By the time he finished the first cup he was able to look at her and see her.  “Thank you,” he said simply, holding the cup out to her.

            “You’re welcome.”  Hiding her stinging eyes from his notice, she took the cup.  “Let me get your second cup.”

            She brought him a second cup of tea; he drank it.  When he had nearly got to the bottom of it, she got up and retrieved her bottle of brandy along with two tumblers. 

            She set the tumblers and bottle down on the coffee table and sat down in the rickety chair across from him.  His eyes were looking a little better, slightly more focused; with any luck he might revive enough to be able to go to sleep.

            “Rupert,” Elisabeth said, “don’t you think that _may_be the Council had you followed because they were worried about you?”

            Rupert snorted loudly with his whole body, making his tea swing dangerously in the cup.  “The only thing they’re worried about is that I might spill their secrets before I blow my brains out.”

            “Nobody’s blowing out their brains,” Elisabeth said repressively.

            “I should,” he said.  “A _dog_ shouldn’t be this sick.”

            “Thought you said you were just a bit tired.”

            He glared at her, but at her steady gaze his eyes dropped, and he buried his face in his teacup again, draining it.

            “Would you like some brandy?” Elisabeth inquired.

            “Thought you disapproved of my taking to drink in times of distress.”

            “You’re not drinking alone,” she told him mildly, pouring them each a glass.

            Holding out his drink, she lifted her eyes in time to catch the twist of grief in his face; quick as a lightning flash, it dissolved once more into the blank shellshock of his former expression.  He put the empty teacup down next to his glasses on the coffee table and accepted the new glass from her hand.  “Drink up,” she said.

            He saluted her messily with the glass and downed a large swallow.

            “Not so fast,” she said, “we don’t want you sick.”

            Chastened, he took a much smaller second sip.  Elisabeth took a long sip of her own brandy.  She felt she needed it.  An hour ago she was on a perfectly normal academic pendulum, and now look.

            As if he could read her mind, Rupert said, “I really am sorry to barge in on your work like this.”

            She looked up.  “Don’t apologize,” she said.  “I’m glad you came.”

            And crazily enough, that was also true:  disheveled and wrecked as he was, he was still a welcome sight—still an equal, a friend in a class by himself—still in some way unaccountably hers….A bit from _At the Back of the North Wind_ came to her mind, little Diamond rocking his sibling baby and saying, “Love makes the only my-ness”—

            Elisabeth swallowed the returning ache in her throat and took another sip of the brandy.  If she didn’t take charge of this situation she would likely fall prey to a case of the Victorian maudlins.  And Rupert was certainly going to be no help.

            As if to prove her point, he said, “You…you know what happened?”

            She looked up at him.  His eyes were haunted: Elisabeth had a fleeting notion that if she were to look into them she would see not her reflection but the shadowy image of a fresh, clumsily-dug grave.  It’s all those fairy tales, she told herself with asperity; but it did no good, Rupert’s eyes on hers were making her ache in a place she had forgotten to guard.

            She said:  “Yes.  I know what happened.”

            Words suddenly crowded into her throat:  _I couldn’t tell you_—_You couldn’t have known_—but she could not say them, couldn’t express her own mortification at being a step ahead of his grief, couldn’t even warn him to avoid the topic….The best she could do was repeat herself:  “I know,” she said again, lamely—and take refuge in another long sip of brandy.

            But he was still looking at her avidly, and she realized after a few moments that he wanted her to repeat back to him what had happened, to prove that she knew so that he would not have to explain, would not have to give any more reports. 

            At first she quailed; then she drew breath and said the words.  “There was a battle.  You fought.  You won.  And every one survived.  Except—”  She stopped.

            “Yes,” he said.

            She nodded.

            “Okay,” he said.

            “You’re done now,” she told him, gently.

            He shook his head, lifting it from the back of the couch where he’d rested it briefly.  “No,” he said.  “I have a plane ticket back to the States in two days.  They’re expecting me.  I have—work to do…there’s no one at the Hellmouth to—…I’m going to have to go.  Thank you for the tea, and the brandy.  I feel much better.”  He leaned forward as if to rise, but Elisabeth was up faster and pushed him back firmly with a hand on his chest.

            “You’re not going anywhere,” she said.  “You’re staying the night.”

            Leaning back looking up at her, he uttered, “But—but—I thought you said—”

            “You’re going to drink, and then you’re going to sleep.”  She laid the back of her hand against his forehead.  “And I think you have a fever.”

            “I can’t sleep,” he said instantly.

            “With enough drink in you, you will.”

            He was shaking his head so that she couldn’t properly touch him to feel his temperature.  “Tried that.  Didn’t work.”

            “When was this?”

            “Wh-what?”

            She planted her hands on her hips and stared down at him.  “When did you try to drink yourself to sleep?”

            “What d’you mean?”  He blinked up at her.

            She let out a pent-up sigh.  “When was the last time you tried to sleep?”

            He didn’t answer her immediately.  “…I don’t know.  It’s all running together.  Two days, maybe.”

            She drew another hardy breath.  “And when did you sleep before that?”

            He didn’t appear to understand her question.

            She gentled her voice.  “Rupert:  when was the last time you had any sleep?”

            He didn’t answer, just looked up at her.

            “Have you slept since the battle?”

            No answer.

            “How long ago was the battle?”

            This, it seemed, he could answer.  “Twelve days.”

            Elisabeth swallowed.  Apparently Spike was not the only one keeping a careful count.  “And you haven’t slept at all since then?”

            “I don’t remember,” he said.

            She believed him.

            At last she let out a long sigh.  “You need medical attention.”

            “No,” he uttered.  “No, I can’t—”

            “Rupert, you should be in a hospital bed on a saline drip, antibiotics, and sedatives.  You need more help than I can give you.”

            “I’m not _asking_ you for help—”

            “Like hell you’re not.  You come in here with this bullshit about a cup of tea—”

            She had raised her voice.  Rupert said quietly, “I’d better go.”

            “You’re not fooling anybody with that.  Well you may be fooling yourself, but you’re certainly not fooling me—”

            He glared at her.  “Dammit, I _did_ only come here for—”

            She cut him off.  “For what?”

            “I needed a moment to regroup—”

            “You’re going on twelve-plus days without sleep, total dehydration, three fights, two injuries, one new bruise, and a partridge in a pear tree, and you came here because _you just needed a moment to regroup_.”  Elisabeth was dimly aware that yelling at him was probably not the most helpful idea, but her control had slipped.

            “I’m trying not to—”

            “Are you even listening to yourself?”  Elisabeth raised shaking hands, half in appeal, half in an effort to stop them clenching into fists.  “Or do I have to lay you out with my only table lamp to get you to _stop_?”

            “It’d probably improve the lamp,” he sniffed, looking over at it.

            Her fists clenched despite her efforts.

            He looked up at her with the ghost of his smart-aleck smirk.  “And you’ve got it wrong, I have only one injury, not two.”

            She was seized with a mad desire to laugh, but instead merely returned the smirk and said quietly:  “I was going for a parallel to Christmas carols, not strict accuracy.  And speaking of the one injury, how’s that going?”

            Rupert drew his shoulders in.  “It’s healing nicely, thank you.”

            “Let’s see,” Elisabeth said.

            “I’m not about to show you my scar.  I realize that your Presidents are in the habit of showing off such marks in public, but in my country—”

            “I highly doubt that yours is a scar as of yet,” Elisabeth said.  She bent close and reached for his collar, for the second time that evening.

            For the second time he took her wrist and stopped her.  “Don’t,” he said.

            She shook his hand off.  “You’ve put yourself in my hands, Rupert,” she told him with a fine edge in her voice.  “And that means you’ll accept the consequences.”  He opened his mouth, but she cut him off before he could even get started.  “And that means _no more arguments_.”  She got his collar undone and began unbuttoning the shirt, pulling it out of his trousers as she went.

            “Elisabeth—”

            “_At all_.”  She parted the unbuttoned oxford shirt and gently lifted the hem of his T-shirt, exposing his pale flesh, and the clumsy, aging dressing over the soft place beneath his ribs.

            She glanced up at him.  He seemed to have acquiesced; he had leaned his head back again and was staring glassily at the ceiling.

            “There’s fresh bleeding here,” she said.

            He sniffed, but did not raise his head.  “I _may_ have pulled the stitches a little in that scuffle with Robson,” he said, in a weak longsuffering voice.

            She was slowly peeling away the dressing from the untidy wound.  “And I suppose your little scuffle with Robson is also responsible for the wound being septic,” she said tartly.

            He lifted his head.  “It’s not septic yet!  It doesn’t even smell.”

            She raised her eyes without lifting her chin, and merely looked at him.  He let his head fall back again.

            The stained dressing came fully away in her hands, and she rolled it up distastefully.  “It’s a good thing I made a policy in this dimension of keeping a proper first aid kit.”  She got up and went to retrieve it.  For several long minutes there was silence between them as she cleaned the surface of the wound and applied antibiotic ointment, then secured a fresh gauze dressing.  “You’re really lucky this isn’t worse,” she said as she folded the rest of the gauze back into its box.  “Considering what lack of sleep does to the healing process.”

            “It isn’t like I haven’t _tried _to sleep,” he said caustically, with his eyes half shut.

            Her answer was simple.  “Stop trying.”  She stood up with the first-aid box.  He opened his eyes to look up at her.  “You can’t be trying and sleeping at the same time.  This is the time to let go.”

            He shut his eyes again; a moment passed.  “It’s not safe,” he said finally.

            She did not deny it.  “Well, you can’t go on like this, either.”

            She watched him draw a long breath.  “There…there are dreams,” he said, with his eyes closed.

            When she did not answer right away, he dared a glance up at her.  “I would think there would be,” she said.

            He shut his eyes again.

            When he opened them again, she was standing before him with a glass of clear liquid.  “Drink this,” she said.

            He narrowed his eyes at it.  “What is it?”

            “It’s water.  You’re going to drink one of these for every glass of brandy you take.”

            “That’s going to slow my rate of intoxication,” he said.  “And even the intoxication wasn’t my idea in the first place.”

            “Yeah, well, I wasn’t kidding about the total dehydration.  You need water.”

            “Are you sure it isn’t just an experiment to see how fast you can make me piss?”  But he accepted the glass and took a long drink of it, raising his eyes over the rim to her silent laughing grin.

            She sat down and watched him as he manfully set himself to drink the full glass of water.  At last he set the glass with a firm clink on the table and looked up at her.  “It’s good to see you again,” he said.

            She poured him another brandy.  “I’m sure it’s good to be seeing anything out of those eyes.”  Her voice was still tart, and she recoiled from the sound of it, looking up at him fearfully.  But he appeared not to have heard her; he had followed his own remark into a wandering stare around her flat.  “Nice place you have here,” he murmured, accepting the brandy as she put it into his hand.

            “Thank you,” she said.  “That last chunk of money came in handy.  I’ve got a two-year lease paid off completely.  Lashed out on the nice flat and figured I could pay for decent furnishings later down the road.”

            He nodded, sipping the brandy.  She watched him narrowly, looking for signs of reduced tolerance to alcohol.  She didn’t want to give him too much.

            “That makes sense,” he said, letting his eyes go unfocused on her livingroom.  “Each piece is its own story.  That’s the way to build it, one piece at a time…one little story at a time….I don’t see your books.”

            “They’re up those little stairs there, in the loft area.  Don’t have a large collection yet, but I’m working on it.”

            “You’ll have to show me that old Prayer Book,” he said dreamily, sipping again.

            “Of course,” she said; but she made no move to get it, and he did not appear to be impatient, or even remember that he had said he wanted to see it. 

            He had come nearly to the end of the brandy when he said, “You’ve done it now.  I need to find your W.C.”

            She gestured toward the side corridor.  “It’s on the left,” she said.  “Here, let me—”

            “No, no, I can make it myself—it’s all right—”  He staggered against the side of the couch, giving the lie to his assertion.  Elisabeth jumped to take his arm, and he kept up the pretense of resisting for only a second before letting her lead him slowly to the bathroom. 

            She didn’t want to follow him in, so she stood just out of the doorway, her eyes on the ceiling of the corridor.  “Do you want me to help you—?”

            “No,” he said dryly.  “This part I think I can do.”

            She waited while he finished, and turned round only when she saw his shaking hand feel for the doorjamb as he came out.  She led him once more to the couch, where he sank down wordlessly, picked up the tumbler, and tossed down the rest of the brandy with movements that grew increasingly sketchy.

            She gave him more water, but he only drank half of it before he leaned his head back again and closed his eyes.  She watched closely, her breath suspended, waiting for a clear sign that he was falling asleep.  She got it when he snorted suddenly and jerked his head up, breathing hard and fast.

            She went to him, hands out to gather his.  “Come,” she said quietly.

            “No,” he mumbled.

            But he did not try to stop her lifting his arm around her neck, and even shifted a little to help her haul his dead weight up from the couch.  She teetered a little, then got him to his dragging feet, which she talked him into moving slowly, one step at a time, back down the corridor to her bedroom.

            She sat him on the bed and propped him up against her front while she worked to get him out of his shirt.  As soon as she freed the cuff buttons and got his arms out of the sleeves, his hands came awake to find their way around her waist and under the hem of her sweatshirt.

            She drew them out again, gently, and set him back so that she could drop to untie his shoes.  His eyes followed her glassily, and he made an inarticulate, nearly voiceless sound in his throat.  “Shh,” she said.  She set his shoes aside and pushed him back so that he dropped slowly onto the bed face-up, then undid his belt and worked his trousers off, moving quickly.  His legs were pale and thinner than she remembered.

            He was moving his lips; she watched them form one shape over and over, and realized it was her name.  “Shh,” she said again.  “Come here; lie this way.”  She helped him shift around so that his head was propped on the pillows; tugged the covers out from under him and put his legs into them.

            He grew articulate again, briefly.  “I told you.  I can’t sleep.”

            “Then don’t,” she said.  “Just rest.”  She tucked the covers over his chest and sat down on the edge of the bed at his side.  “I’ll be here.”  She smoothed back his mussed hair.  “Just rest.”

            His eyes were deeply shadowed in their sockets; the dim light of her little bedside lamp picked out every line on his face in sharp relief.  He drew a long shuddering breath and let it go in a loud sigh.  “That’s it,” she murmured, stroking back his hair.

            She waited, a five-minutes’ vigil in which fragments and tumbrils of thought shaped and reshaped the landscape of her mind, until he went gently into the good night she had prepared for him.  _Do not ask for whom the bell tolls_…._in the economy of the fantastic_…_constructs of reality_..._What is my gift?_..._His face is so tired_….

            “Oh, Rupert,” she sighed, when she saw he was asleep at last, “what are you doing here?”


End file.
